


see you through the smoke

by keithsforeheadtattoo



Category: Nightbound (Visual Novel)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Holidays, M/M, Multi, Other, Triad - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23999554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithsforeheadtattoo/pseuds/keithsforeheadtattoo
Summary: “You like the holidays, or naw?” Nik asks you, mid-breakfast and out of the blue.You’re sifting through the mail. Bills, bills, accursed diadem, coupon book.“They’re… all right,” you answer noncommittally, trying to read his expression.From inside the kitchen, Cal answers against the white noise of frying oil, “Well, I’m still gettin’ you both something, so, we’re not even playing that.”a Nightbound holiday special!! since we never got one for real ): haha.(could be interpreted as MC/Nik, or MC/Cal, orrrrr Nik/Cal/MC all together!!)
Relationships: Cal Lowell/Main Character (Nightbound), Nik Ryder/Cal Lowell/Main Character, Nik Ryder/Main Character (Nightbound)
Kudos: 6





	see you through the smoke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bat_country](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bat_country/gifts).



“You like the holidays, or naw?” Nik asks you, mid-breakfast and out of the blue.

You’re sifting through the mail. Bills, bills, accursed diadem, coupon book.

“They’re… all right,” you answer noncommittally, trying to read his expression.

From inside the kitchen, Cal answers against the white noise of frying oil, “Well, I’m still gettin’ you both something, so, we’re not even playing that.”

Nik smiles into the bottom of his coffee mug.

“Why’d you ask, anyway?” You comfortably cross one of your ankles over his, under the table.

Nik shrugs gently and spends a long moment casting his eyes across the sunlit span of the house. Filled with his artifacts and your artworks and Cal’s carvings.

“Our first year all together,” Nik confesses eventually, and softly.

You allow your whole face to light up. It’s been an actual, demonic hell of a year and also you totaled your car in the Garden District. Somehow every day has flown and every figurative and literal ghost has felt like duck soup. The house is finally settled real-estate-wise, the new railings on the porch are all painted, you’ve got two thoughtful and attentive guys who care about you and one of them can transform at will into a gigantic wolf.

Nik refills your coffee mug without you having to ask, both in general, and right now.

“I already have everything I want for… any possible holiday.” You say just loud enough for both of them to hear.

= = = = = = =

A deep, horrendous cry gurgles all the way through the tupelo roots as the eldtritch animal Nik arrowed through the brain turns suddenly into a burst of green light and noxious mist. The force of it spatters both of you in a runny coat of swamp algae.

“Well, shit, there you go, then,” Nik pants heavily. His accent’s as deep in the bayou as his waist is right now, so it’s more like _daygo den._

“Think he’s done now?” You smear moss from your eyelids.

“Big time.” Nik confirms, peering into the spot in the water where he felled the creature. The whole area’s still stirring uncertainly with a mess of shredded bark, but he reaches in, delves all the way up to the armpit, and comes out with his fist closed around the bulking, ruby head of a long scepter.

You immediately give a triumphant little cheer. This particular job has already lasted three full weeks longer than it was supposed to, and the couple who hired you two out for it definitely did not mention ahead of time that the monster had low-level telepathy.

“BAGGED HIM, BABY!” You holler without even attempting to control yourself.

Nik spits out an errant leaf so he can grin.

“Well, hey, you did the hard part!” He wades toward you, the scepter lifted out of the water in one arm. “…took all nine legs out!”

You slosh towards him as quickly as the dragging bog allows and hug him so voraciously it takes your own legs out, wrapping around Nik’s hips in a familiar pose. He’s so used to it he knows already how and where to hold you even with only a single hand free.

You wipe a constellation of wet mud dots from Nik’s face, neither of you speaking, both still breathing hard from the hunt.

“They better pay us fuckin’ quadruple for this when we get back,” you say in almost a whisper.

He smiles, but it’s pressed right against yours.

“Hey, let’s go get the kinda burritos you like,” he says once you eventually break apart and are both fighting your way back up out of the cold swamp, starting to shiver in the sharp air as the adrenaline leaves and stops heating you.

“That’s probably the most romantic sentence I’ve ever heard,” you say and are only a little bit kidding. “But — oh shit — I think… it’s Christmas Eve?”

This gig was supposed to be done around December third, but, sure enough, that was twenty-one days ago.

Nik raises his eyebrows. “…they’re probably closed, then, huh?”

You’re already covered in flora and possibly fauna so you just stretch out on the bank in the dirt and reeds. You sigh, with heady relief, and at the jeweled scepter glinting in the sunset’s last beams, and at the fact that Nik is also only a little bit kidding and will still call the burrito place’s answering machine to make sure. Nik’s resting pose is like it always is, his leg intertwined somewhere with yours.

“I think I spent today right.” He says, resolutely, resting his hand on you.

= = = = = = =

Donny is trying his endearing and pitiful damnedest to pick up the banjo, and you and Cal have been surviving the first six notes of Joplin’s _Mercedes Benz_ for more than an hour.

“ _Ohhhh_ kay, now.” Cal puts a cap on it.

Donny takes it good-naturedly, the brothers laugh it off together, he says he’s going outside to harvest the strawberry patch before the frost. You’ve been squinting into the fine details of your latest drawing’s eyelashes, and the boys’ exchange relieves you of your concentration and into a smile.

“He’s trying,” says Cal. But, _tryne_.

“Oh, Lord, won’tcha buy me…” you start singing it just because it’s already been twanging around your skull for this long. Your digital tablet’s abandoned and you’re swaying your way over to Cal’s lap. He obliges you for long after you’ve run out of lyrics you remember.

At your wordless, gentle urge, he proffers his unfinished block of European aspen, and you turn it over, awed, to marvel at all the places he’s made it sprout floating tendrils.

“She’s not near done yet,” he explains, “but I think she’ll be a sea nettle.”

He sets down one of the chisels from the set you just gifted him to meet your eyes completely.

You tell him his carving’s beautiful and remind him that he’s beautiful and set the to-be-jellyfish aside for safekeeping so that you can properly bury your face in Cal’s shoulder.

Dinner that night ends up being made mostly from the garden and has places set for the four of you. You’re wearing the bracelet Nik got for you, jade woven with copper, saturated with an octet of basic enchantments. In a special glass case, shelved in your room, is the carving Cal had presented to you that morning: the flower of your birth, and a stunningly intricate hummingbird in flight, attached to the pistil with its delicate beak.

It might be a holiday on the calendar, it might not. You haven’t checked much lately. Your occasion has been that you and Nik have been off working in Breaux Bridge and Donny has been at a sleepaway camp for werewolf youth, and the three of you all came home in the same weekend.

You and Nik had arrived a day before Donny, and Cal greeted the pair of you with equal fervor. Stretched the night out long with the house left to just the adults. A neverending crawfish boil to use up all the ones you and Nik brought home.

Now you’re all four in the high-backed oak chairs you picked out months ago, Donny’s telling stories from camp, Nik steals a bite of radishes from Cal’s plate instead of reaching for the serving dish.

“Merry something, you guys,” Donny beams at the end of his final tale, his beatific gaze roving between the three of you.

“I love you, buddy,” Cal replies right away.

Nik smiles into the glint of a small charm on his necklace while he turns it in his fingers: the one you got for him. Jeweled; emeralds and opals and peridots; a crescent moon that he hung reverently alongside his first, spiraling pendant.

You light one of the scented candles in the table’s centerpiece, cinnamon wax in the shape of a pinecone. Cal serves three Bloody Mary rounds, virgin for Donny, and around the half-lit fireplace you end up falling asleep to that movie you’ve seen a million times and the bends of two warm arms around you.

= = = = = = =

Ivy’s New Year’s resolutions are to finally try Gruyere cheese, to take less mercy on street harassers than ever before, and to kiss every stray cat who’s willing.

Krom treats his vows like a birthday wish, says they can’t possibly come true if he says them aloud.

“I will ensure Nik Ryder is never allowed to wear this tie again,” Garrus says, and maybe that’s his resolution.

“I think it’s cute!” you defend the fleur-de-lis pattern.

It’s still eleven thirty-four, so, more than enough time to make a whole pitcher of piña coladas and ration them out into individual novelty glasses. Ivy’s says BATON ROUGE OR DIE, she says she’s done both and they’re definitely not mutually exclusive. Everyone collectively agrees they’re not about to Auld Lang Syne it so Garrus puts some Amy Winehouse on the jukebox and soon enough most of you have split up into partner dancing.

Nik twirls you around as much as he can while you’ve still got a hold of your drink. A glass stein in the shape of a cowboy boot, half-filled with pineapple slush. You go to ask Krom something and Cal promises to keep your dance partner warm for you in the meantime. Winehouse croons out _Mr. Magic._

The moon is almost full and right over the roof of the Graveyard Shift. Your resolution for the coming year is to learn how to scuba dive because anything else you can think of is already on lock.

You still have time left to dance a song with Cal, and one with Nik, and several with you wedged between the pair of them.

At a minute to midnight, Ivy calls for everyone to circle up and press their wrists collectively together.

“This isn’t a blood ritual, is it?” Krom furrows his brow, two small grinding rows of stone.

Ivy pulls a face; “I mean, kind of, but don’t worry, everybody gets to keep all of theirs.”

She uses one skeletal finger from her unoccupied hand to even out the coat of her lipstick.

“It’s just a friendship thing. Nothing actually binding, it’s just, like…” she shrugs. “…for tradition.”

When the clock strikes twelve — loudly, with a dozen clangs of a set of big, tin bells — the six of you have your wrists all crammed into a single awkward formation, with Ivy’s harmless incantation producing multicolored sparkles in a slow, winding coil that climbs each of your arms. A reedy, thin sound emanates from it, almost melodic enough to be a song.

You aren’t sure if it’s the spell or the rum or the introspection, but time moves slow enough for you to look at everybody in the eyes, deeply enough to appreciate all of their respective colors. Krom’s flint and graphite irises; Garrus’s arctic blue; Ivy’s iridescent, burning carmine.

Cal’s are like soft, dark, layered wenge wood. Nik’s are as hard and glittering as polished tourmaline.

Ivy finishes off a long string of some guttural, arcane language with an exuberant “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” and whatever she was casting starts to fire off humongous balls of golden light that keep expanding and exploding.

You close your eyes and kiss exactly who you want to.

**Author's Note:**

> originally written as a "Choices-mas" gift for **bat_country**! 🖤 🖤 🖤 
> 
> (title is from, as mentioned in the fic haha, "Mr. Magic" by Amy Winehouse)


End file.
